


After all, I am your Doctor (sad ending)

by Honey_Dewey



Series: My Doctor Who stories (mostly 13) [2]
Category: Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: Angst, But someone dies, Injury, Lots of Angst, Surgery, The reader gets hurt, Thirteen doesn’t like that, does this count as body modification?, gender neutral reader, i don’t think it counts as major character death, lots of blood, so I didn’t put that, violence?
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-05
Updated: 2020-05-05
Packaged: 2021-03-03 02:48:33
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,441
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24027676
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Honey_Dewey/pseuds/Honey_Dewey
Summary: You get hurt on an adventure with the Doctor and she does her best to make sure you live, even if it means going to extremes.
Relationships: Thirteenth Doctor/Reader
Series: My Doctor Who stories (mostly 13) [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1733278
Kudos: 19





	After all, I am your Doctor (sad ending)

**Author's Note:**

> No one told me to stop. 
> 
> So I kept going. 
> 
> Anyway! This story has two endings! Because I couldn’t decide which ending I liked more. This is the sad, angsty, death ending. 
> 
> Trigger warning: this story contains descriptions of surgery, blood, and reader death. Please be careful, and if you must, wait for the happier ending to come out before reading this story

Traveling with the Doctor was always risky. She had told you that on day one. The universe was dangerous. There would be explosions and death and tragedy. 

“It’s like I’m a disaster magnet!” She had decided one night. “I’m just glad no one had gotten too hurt.” 

You had smiled and laughed at that time, but now, staring up at the sky, you had to wonder just how many people she had lost for her to say that. How many of her companions had gotten hurt before you. 

“Yaz! (Y/N)!” You could hear her yelling in the distance, her voice high and desperate. “Ryan, check that way! Graham, get the med bay ready! They’re gonna need it when we find them.” 

Feet crunched across the ashen landscape, growing closer. Ryan’s voice drifted closer as you waited, watching the sky dim as the triple suns set above you. It was almost peaceful. Or at least, it would’ve been had you not recently been stabbed. The knife still half embedded in your stomach really did put a damper on the gorgeous sunset. 

“Oh god,” Ryan breathed, seeing you, laying limp amongst the rubble, covered in your own blood. “Oh no.” 

He was incredibly cautious, the entire time just thinking about how to get you back. How exactly he was going to safely carry you with the dyspraxia. What he would say to the Doctor if he had to deliver a corpse. 

Of course, seeing your eyes, open and searching, gave him a tiny bit of hope. You were strong. You’d faced off against plenty of terrible bad guys. You couldn’t succumb to something as simple as being stabbed. 

Getting you to the Doctor was a task. One that Ryan carried out silently. You didn’t say anything as he lifted you, only lazily watched the suns set with rapidly closing eyes. With every blink, it was harder for you to see. More of an effort to open your eyes and watch as the blue box grew steadily closer. 

“Hey Doc!” Graham yelled from his spot in the doorway. “Doc! We found (Y/N)!” 

The Doctor came rushing out from where she’d been bandaging Yaz’s busted knees. “Where? Are they hurt?” 

Ryan wordlessly held you out, and you shakily reached a hand towards the blonde. “Hey Doc.” 

Immediately, the Doctor relived Ryan of your weight, scooping you delicately into her arms and placing you on a stretcher. “Keep your eyes open (Y/N)! Please, eyes open.” 

You coughed, watching the Doctor with blurring vision as she began pushing the stretcher through the halls of the TARDIS. She seemed frantic, almost distracted as she ran, her boots making heavy noises against the metal. 

It was a definite struggle to keep your eyes open. You focused them on anything you could. The passing hexagons on the walls, the suspender strap slipping off the Doctor’s left shoulder, the swing of her blonde hair as she rounded a corner, the way she seemed to glow under the white med bay lights. She was shouting something, and there was Yaz, at her side, talking back. But you couldn’t hear. Couldn’t really see as Yaz began running around, gathering materials on a silver tray. Couldn’t really feel as Ryan lifted you off the stretcher and onto a surgical bed. 

The Doctor appeared again, wearing something you’d never seen her in before. TARDIS blue nurse’s scrubs and black rubber gloves. Her hair was pulled up, revealing her glimmering earring. 

“Stay with us!” She yelled, and you nodded. 

“Will do,” you coughed, feeling blood pass your lips. “Just for you.” 

“(F/N),” the Doctor said, glancing at the knife in your skin. “Do you trust me?” 

You smiled, trying you hardest not to mangle your words. “With my life.” 

That was basically where you slipped out, you having passed out completely as the Doctor gave you a sedative. 

“Doctor,” Yaz breathed, passing the Doctor a heart monitor and watching her frantically stick the pads to your ash crusted skin. “What do you need Doctor?” 

“Gauze,” The Doctor began examining the stab wound as she popped a few IV lines into your veins, trying desperately to bring a proper amount of blood back to your body. “Scratch that, scalpel, and the stuff in that drawer there.” 

Yaz did as told, wincing as the Doctor pulled the knife out carefully and began to cut deeper into your side. “Tell Ryan and Graham to prep a room, and then come back and start washing them up,” The Doctor looked up, eyes full of worry. “Please.” 

When Yaz got back, a bowl of warm water and a few wash cloths with her, and saw the Doctor, all bloodied hands and laser focus as she pulled a light down and groaned her discontent, she sighed. If she didn’t do something, the Doctor was going to be fretting over you for ages. 

“They’ll be fine,” Yaz promised softly. “You know (Y/N), I bet they’ll be up and about by the weekend. Always a fighter, this one,” she mused as she began gently wiping your skin clean. 

The Doctor looked up, face a mask of worry. “This is bad,” she whispered. “Very very bad. Roll that tray over.” 

Yaz gave the tray a push with her foot, sending it wheeling towards the Doctor. She stopped it and took a deep breath. “Ready?”

There was no time to ask what for before the Doctor carefully pulled out a mangled, blood covered pink mass, letting it fall onto the tray before turning back to the hole in your side. 

“What,” Yaz paused. “What is that?” 

The Doctor shushed her, grabbing a few various things and finally, after what must’ve been an eternity, leaned back and began to stitch you up. She carefully maneuvered around the plastic piece she’d put in your skin. “That was the lower half of (F/N)’s stomach. I had to remove it. Technically called a gastrectomy. In simple terms, I pulled the damaged lower half out, stitched it all up nice and neat, and put the end of this feeding tube in at the beginning of the small intestine. If I had the time, and (F/N) hadn’t been critical, I could’ve done the surgery properly and connected the intestine to the remainder of the stomach, but this’ll do just fine. I’ll haveta run an NG tube down through their nose into the remainder of the stomach later, but for right now,” the Doctor stood up and stepped back, looking over her work. “I think they deserve a rest,” she turned to Yaz with an exhaustedly triumph look on her face. “See, told you I was a real doctor.” 

The minor injuries were patched up with little difficulty, and the Doctor carefully kicked the brakes off the surgical bed so she could wheel you right across the hall, where Graham and Ryan were waiting just outside a door. 

“All set up in there Doc,” Graham said. “How’s (F/N)?” 

“Should be right as rain soon,” The Doctor promised. She maneuvered you into the center of the room, putting the brakes on the bed again. “Pass me that IV stand, will you?” 

Ryan passed the metal stand over, and the Doctor began to hang nearby blood bags and IV bags, each one labeled in messy Gallifreyan. She hummed to herself as she worked, expertly and carefully finding the proper vein and getting you all set up for recovery. 

“You be kind to my (F/N) now, you hear?” The Doctor said to her ship as she finished up. “No funny business, no moving them around, or I swear I’ll chuck your stabilizers into a supernova again.” 

Of course, within the next few minutes, everything went, predictably, to shit. 

Your heart had stopped, right as the Doctor had crossed the hall to rummage for a tube, the lights in the med bay lit up red, sending Ryan down the hall in panic. “What’s going on?” 

“Their heart stopped!” The Doctor yelled, rushing back into the room. “Shit! Ryan, the crash cart, now!” 

Ryan pushed the cart across the room to the Doctor, who had already begun to do frantic chest compressions. “C’mon, C’mon (F/N), please!” 

She carefully pinched your nose shut and took a deep breath. Pressing her lips to yours, she let the air out, allowing her respiratory bypass to kick in as she pulled away, letting Ryan take over with the defibrillator. 

They were in there for a half an hour. Your chest was smeared with the residual blood off the Doctor’s gloves, the room in complete disarray as she panicked, trying desperately to save you. 

It was Ryan who called your death. Your fingers were cold and your lips were starting to turn blue when he stepped away, watching the Doctor’s face go slack with panic. “Doc. They’re gone.” 

“No!” The Doctor looked down at you in complete terror. “They can’t be! No! Not to this, not now! Please!” 

But Graham and Yaz had already stepped in, leading her numbly away from you. From your lifeless body. 

For weeks, she didn’t cry. Not a single tear as she cleaned you up, packaged you into a coffin, lay you in the ground. It was only when she visited your grave a few days after the funeral that she broke. 

“I’m so sorry,” she whispered. “I let you get hurt. It’s my fault.” 

She put a hand against your tombstone, feeling the cool stone beneath her fingers. Your name was on it, in a beautiful calligraphy. Beneath that, your date of birth and death, and a small statement made by your parents. Yaz had told them you had died in a car accident, and they had sobbed. 

Now, the Doctor knelt on the ground before your tombstone and finally cried. Her tears were salty, racing quickly down her cheeks and making her choke on her own breath. 

“I promised you eternity,” she hiccuped. “And instead, I got you killed.” 

She pressed a hand on the spot beneath your parents statement, fingers heating up as she pushed regeneration energy into the stone, melting it away until there was a perfect line of circular gallifreyan written there. 

To the stars and back again, we lay your soul to rest. Sleep in peace. I love you.

She stood, suddenly empty of tears. The traditional Gallifreyan send off still glittered in the setting sun, and the Doctor pressed a kiss to her fingers. The residual energy burned off her lips as she set her hand against the final sentence. 

“I love you,” she breathed. “I always have, and I always will.” 

With all of time and space waiting, she left, allowing her final statement to you to shine as she walked away. 

“Drop the headset,” she choked out, fingers tingling. The TARDIS beeped, a concerned low tone, but the Doctor slammed her hands down on the console and barked the order again. 

A slightly mangled headset came down, dangling above a chair in the corner. The Doctor strode towards it, sitting and placing the headset on her head like a crown, letting the white pads stick to her temples. 

“Erase (F/N).” She commanded softly. “Not a single thing left.” 

Right as the TARDIS was about to reluctantly carry out her order, Yaz burst through the door, breathing heavy. “Doctor!” 

“No!” The Doctor shouted, tears beginning to pool again. “Don’t try and stop me, please! I can’t, I can’t keep going.”

Yaz grabbed her face, forcing her to look into her eyes. “Would (F/N) want you to forget?” 

“Please,” The Doctor breathed. “I can’t remember them. Not all my life. Eternity is hard.” 

“Answer my question.” 

“No,” The Doctor whispered weakly. “They wouldn’t.” 

Yaz nodded. “They loved you, Doctor. Not the travel, or the infinity of it all. They loved you.” 

The Doctor let out a hiccuping sob. “I’ve lost so many people Yaz,” she cried. “I can’t lose anyone else!” 

“Okay,” Yaz said. “But there are ways to cope with death other than forgetting! Look at Graham. When he lost Grace, he didn’t forget. He honored her, remembered her. Honor them Doctor. Let (F/N) follow you forever. Into eternity and infinity.” 

Two weeks later, the Doctor was sat wiggling in a leather chair with Yaz holding her hand as one of Yaz’s friends grinned. “You’re sure about this?” 

“Yes,” The Doctor said firmly. “Please.” 

Yaz’s friend laughed. “Here we go.” 

The tattoo machine began to buzz, and the grip on Yaz’s hand tightened. 

“Will this last?” Yaz questioned. “Throughout your lives. Will it?” 

“Dunno,” the Doctor said. “Never had any before.” 

The tattooist laughed. “These things are pretty damn permanent,” she said. “Dunno what y’all are talking about, but this thing’ll be on your corpse.” 

The Doctor laughed slightly, her eyes going dark. “Sure it will.” 

Yaz peered over the Doctor’s head, towards the smooth skin of her back. It was the first time she’d ever seen the Doctor without her shirt off, but she’d insisted the tattoo go where it did. Right between her shoulder blades, where the skin wasn’t freckled or scarred, was a palm sized circle of Gallifreyan. Looping circles and solid lines spelling out your name. 

“They’d love it,” Yaz promised with a small grin. 

The Doctor screwed her eyes shut in pain, her nose scrunching. “They’d better have,” She grumbled, sending up a prayer to whatever god there was that this tattoo stayed. 

Two hundred years later, the Doctor was breathing heavy, fresh out of regeneration. She’d landed in a field, staggered out of her TARDIS and let loose, finally ditching the blonde mop and hazel eyes. Now, she gasped, watching gold burn off her lips. 

“Hey!” A voice called, wandering into the field. “Who are you? Are you okay?” 

The Doctor looked down at her hands. Covered in freckles, hundreds of them. And when she spoke, she was surprised to hear a thick Scottish accent again. “My back.” 

“Is it hurt?” The person asked, holding out a flashlight and stepping closer. “Let me see darlin’.” 

The Doctor carefully took off her burnt coat and lifted her shirts up, letting the person examine her skin. 

“Dunno what you’re so worried about,” the person reassured. “Nothin’ there but a funky tattoo.” 

“Oh,” the Doctor smiled, feeling the world tilt underneath her. “Thank you.” 

Ever since then, whenever she regenerated, no matter the circumstances, she always checked her back first. Always and forever. And every time, there you were, constantly watching over her, constantly reminding her. Infinity may be hard, and remembering may be harder, but nothing could ever be worse than forgetting. 

**Author's Note:**

> ❤️🧡💛💚💙💜


End file.
